TIMES ONLINE: Down come the cheesy Che Guevara posters in student bedsits across the land. Off come the T-shirts wittily emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.
Twenty years after Eastern Europe toppled statues of Lenin, the Polish Government is about to finish the job by making it all but impossible to wave the red flag — even in jest.
Up to two years in jail await anyone glorifying communism according to an amendment to Article 256 of the Polish criminal code — the race-hate article — which is likely to come into force next year. The ban outlaws “the production, distribution, sale or possession ... in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist or other symbols of totalitarianism”. So if you planned to sing the Internationale while marching down the centre of Warsaw to the old communist headquarters — now housing financial services companies — forget it.
The revised Bill has already passed the Polish Senate. President Kaczynski has to sign it into law by Monday and no one in Warsaw seriously believes that he will hesitate.
His twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the opposition Law and Justice party, has made his view clear: “No symbol of communism has a right to exist in Poland because these are symbols of a genocidal system that should be compared to Nazism.” >>> Roger Boyes | Friday, November 27, 2009
